BANGKOK, THAILAND – Thailand’s defence minister will join high-stakes talks with Cambodia on December 27, potentially paving the way for a truce amid a third week of deadly border clashes, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul announced on Friday.
The negotiations, set at a tense border crossing since December 24, aim to revive a fragile ceasefire brokered earlier this year with U.S. President Donald Trump’s intervention following July skirmishes. “If the defence minister is able to come to an agreement with his Cambodian counterpart, the two countries will make a deal in line with a previous pact,” Anutin told reporters. He stressed mutual commitments: “What is important is that both of us have to keep the promises that both will not threaten, offend, and instigate, and to reduce hostility between the two countries.”A Cambodian defence ministry spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Clashes erupted anew in early December after the prior truce collapsed, claiming at least 98 lives and displacing over half a million people along the disputed 817-km frontier, from forested inland zones near Laos to coastal provinces. Neither ASEAN chair Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who helped forge the earlier deal, nor Trump has quelled the violence this time.
Beijing has ramped up pressure, with China’s special envoy for Asian affairs, Deng Xijun, shuttling between Bangkok and Phnom Penh in recent days. Anutin expressed hope for lasting peace: “I hope that this time will be the last time to sign such an agreement, so that there will be peace in the area and people can return to their homes.”The neighbours have long traded accusations over truce violations, with the July agreement expanded in October to broader conflict resolution, yet tensions persist in this Southeast Asian flashpoint.